Falling Into Christmas

I subscribe to the WFS newletter and received this gem in my inbox this morning. I wished I would have received it earlier, before the madness of the holiday got in full swing, but it's not too late to salvage the most important and reverent days of this holiday. I think it interesting that Jean (Jean Kirkpatrick died in 2000 and this was taken from the WFS archives) says we should use our painful memories to bring us the joy that we sought so long while drinking. But it is so true, those painful, excruciating memories are so often the only things standing between me and a bottle of Jack Daniels. I love also that she describes herself as someone that fell into Christmas trees, she's my kind of gal.  If anyone of you would like information about how to subscribe to the WFS newletter, I'm your gal. 

Now, how about we quit making new painful memories and start repurposing those old ones? Love you guys!

Christmas Cheers?Christmas Blues?

Jean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D.

      This is the time of year for families, for relationships, for friendships to get together.  It is also a time of merriment.  But, most of all, it is a time of worship for a large part of the world.  Yet this is so often muted or forgotten in the mad pace of the Holiday Season.

      This is also the time of year when it seems as if the whole world is drinking.  Every time I turn around, someone is suggesting I have a drink.  Everywhere I go I see bottles of liquor, wine and beer.  Everyone seems to be drinking or talking about drinking.  Where was all of this free-flowing alcohol when I was drinking?  Did it flow as freely then and I missed it?  Or maybe I was the one drinking it without knowing it?  That’s possible!

      And all this leads me to ask, why do Americans celebrate this holiest of all periods with alcohol, alcohol, alcohol?

      Every Holiday Season I am reminded of those many terrible years when I put so many persons through hell, myself included.  I can remember, even now so many years later, the shakes, the hangovers, the remorse, the guilt, and the empty promises.  “No, I'll NEVER do it again.  I’m so sorry I ruined your Holiday,” I said, as I wondered where I’d get the money to get a drink to recover.  Or who I would visit to get the drinks I needed, and craved, and lied for.

      Oh, I thought it was so hilarious to help friends trim their Christmas trees and then fall into them accidentally because I was drunk.  That was funny... wasn’t it?  Now, all these years later, I feel disgust and pity for that drunken woman who was a disgrace to herself and to any who knew her.  I also feel great compassion, for there will be so many like her this year... next year... and all the years to follow.

      There is little humor connected to a drunken woman, yet I let myself be conned into thinking that I was the life of the party.  Never did I see that I was the fool of the party, that my actions were simply indefensible on any other grounds than that I was sick in body, mind, and spirit.  Yet that still did not, nor does not, take away the ill feeling, the sadness, the unhappiness I caused so many others.

      These musings of mine do not much help those of you who are still suffering during this Season.  I want to help you, for I feel great compassion toward, and for, those of you who wish the Holidays were over because of the temptations that surround you.  And I feel even more compassion for those of you who are unaware of the temptation that you might so innocently succumb to.  “Awe come on, just have one.  It won’t hurt you.  And, anyway, you can’t be the only one without a drink to toast the Season, can you?”  Oh, yes you can.

      Although this Season is tough for you, never let yourself be conned into believing there is nothing you can do.

      There is a great deal you can do.  There are symptoms we can observe and then take actions to counter them.  If we are edgy, or feel uneasy, or are ill-tempered, or angry often, or are depressed more than ever, or fatigued, or eating when not hungry, or very nervous, or generally out-of-sorts, now is the time to examine these emotions very carefully.  These feelings oftentimes mask our deeper subconscious feeling of wanting to drink.  We feel left out, not one of the crowd, sometimes we even feel rejected, but we don’t permit ourselves to know that we are reacting in sublimated ways.

      Early in the Holiday Season it is advisable for all of us to review our feelings about drinking and about all of the alcohol flowing around us.  Are we feeling good about ourselves or do we feel, that at any moment, we will ‘slip,’ let temptation overcome us?  Are we able to think clearly and realistically about our terrible days of drinking during other Holiday Seasons and now feeling true happiness for our sobriety and our good physical feelings, to say nothing about our mental and spiritual feelings?

      Oftentimes the most effective deterrent to our ever drinking again is the way we are able to remember the sad, and terrible, and awful, and unhappy, and sometimes, tragic times of years gone by.  These painful memories should help us to feel the happiness and joy we should be celebrating now.

      Those days of endless pain and constant recurring remorse are over, gone forever.  Now, this Season, we are able to feel good about ourselves.  We know that we are in charge of ourselves and our actions.  No one in this world can make any of us drink... only we can do that.  Now is the time to know, beyond any shadow of a lingering doubt, that we are alcoholic persons who cannot drink for physiological reasons.  We have a disease that is treatable and we are doing just that.

      Today, during this Holiday Season, we take charge of ourselves and know the truest joy and happiness in this Season.  We are confident about ourselves, and we know that we are truly blessed in our ability to handle ourselves.

Whatssup Doc?

Warning to all male readers! Clang! Clang! Clang!: Female stuff ahead.

Note to all Gynecologists out there:  Please don't tell your patient that you think she might have an STD until you get the results back!!

So here's how it all went down.  I finally followed through on my promise to go and get everything checked out this year.  Boobs, Butt and Bunnykins.  Boobs are fine, I have them checked every year.  Butt's dandy too, not due for the next voyage up the old poop chute (sorry, don't know what's come over me this morning) for a year or two.  After my last colonoscopy, my doctor proclaimed that I have the colon of a fifteen years old.  One of my smartass "real" friends told me I should give it back.

But the Bunnykins, well, the poor thing hasn't had a good looking over in about 4 years and it's been through some changes. 

MENOPAUSE!

 Hey, you there, you nasty bitch with your dry withering lips and your parsimonious precipitation, I will not let you steal this one last guilty pleasure of mine.  Okay, I have two guilty pleasures, ice cream and sex, sometimes a combination of both.

And you can't have them!!

So girls, you know the drill and the position.  The doctor's down there with the sheet over her head, like one of those old times photographers trying to get the best shot.

Her:  "Do you itch?"

Me: "Not in public." (Not really. I said, "Uh...no...")

Her: "Have you had any discharge?"

Me:  "Uh...no..."

Her:  "No green, smelly discharge?"

Me:  NO! (Hell, it's been like the Sahara Desert down there. I think I would have noticed.)

Her:  "Hmmm...You know my husband is a gynecologist too.  And one time he sent me off to a conference for a week.  When he got back, he didn't want to be with me.  Then I found out he had a girlfriend.  But now I am just concentrating on the good things. (Imagine this in broken English because this was in Mexico.)

Now imagine this: Me, legs spread, thought bubble floating above my head.  Why is she telling me this?  Poor her, she obviously can't get past this if she tells a brand new patient all about her husband's affair.  Boing!! Light bulb!

Me:  "What is it you think is going on down there?"

I see her shoulders shrug under the sheet.  Then her breezy reply floats up.

Her:  "I thought you might have  Trichomoniasis, but you said you didn't have green stinky discharge, so no worry. We'll know in a week."

A week!!!  Whattt???

Okay, I'll cut to the chase.  The test results are in and  I do not have Trichomoniasis, which is a sexually transmitted disease.  I never really thought there was any possibility that I did.  I knew that I hadn't done anything and I was pretty damn sure that the cap'n hadn't done anything, but you know what they say, "Do you ever really know another person?"

Let's just say it was a week of hell and suspicion and ups and downs and both of us eyeing each other as if we were strangers and then reassuring each other with, "God knows what you can catch off the toilet seats down here."

The test results came back fine, just some minor abrasions because I'm still a living breathing sexual being, dammitall, even if it is dryer than nuclear winter down there.

Now what does all of this have to do with drinking?  Well, there were a few times I might have thought,  God, I could really use a drink right now.

But I ask you, what in the above scenario would have been made better by getting drunk.  Use your imagination here.  Me, drunk, pointing a snarly one-eyed finger (yes, I know fingers don't have eyes, but I'm drunk remember?) at the cap'n.  "You dirty, rotten sumbitch!  I knew I should have listened to my ex-husband about you."

Nuff said.

Flowing

“When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

I have never been able to anticipate any event, no matter how small, without some trepidation.  "How should I act?"  "What should I say?"  "What does everyone expect of me?"  "Who do they expect me to be?"  It happened every time I met someone new, walked into a bar, or even just passed someone on the street.

Alcohol smoothed that awkwardness, it ironed out all of my wrinkles. When I quit drinking, I found myself, once again, feeling like I was walking around wearing last season's outfit, pulled in haste from the dirty clothes bin.

Words no longer trip off my tongue, I no longer dazzle people with my snappy comebacks or my witty repertoire.  

The old fears still haunt me, but now all I have to offer the crowds, the strangers, and the old friends is me. Wrinkled, rumpled, and worn.

I told Riversurfer yesterday in a comment on her blog Me, My Voice and I , I can't believe how much energy it took to try and be who I thought everyone else thought I was.

Now I'm just me. Going with the flow.  It is effortless.

It feels....wonderful.

 

Saturdays With Friends

 Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: Their measurements are being taken and compared. ~Erica Jong

348 Days of Sober Sex (I'm just checking to see if anyone actually reads this or if they just skim over it.)

Late Saturday mornings, after she had stood eagle-eyed over her under-aged, under-paid, and under-motivated house slaves (my brothers and sister and I), making sure that we had dusted under Dad's bowling trophies and raked the avocado green shag carpet until it stood proudly upright from its usual downtrodden  clumps, my mother would grab up her bottle of Tab and pack of Winstons and head down the street to her best friend, Lucy's house.  Mom and Lucy would convene at Lucy's just polished lemony fresh modern American Colonial dining room set, ashtray between them and ice cold Tabs and cigarettes in hand, while Lucy's own, recently released from indenture, house monkey's (my best friend Lisa and her sisters) were sprawled out in front of the TV in the family room watching the hip kids on the east coast gyrate on American Band Stand.

I usually beat Mom out the door on her way to our best friends' house and would already be sprawled belly down alongside the Seigrist girls, with my chin in my hands and my calves in the air, feet jerking spasmodically to the tunes of the Stylistics or the Carpenters, my feet ain't got rhythm on land or air.  Once Dick Clark bid, "For now, Dick Clark...so long" we would wander into the kitchen and perch ourselves on the maple veneered captain's chairs and listen intently as our mothers gossiped about the other neighbors, or debated whether Dr. Lee Baldwin, a recovering alcoholic, would finally find love in the arms of Dr. Lesley, or would he remain faithful to his neurotic institutionalized wife, Meg.  The denizens of Port Charles, the home town of our mothers' favorite soap, General Hospital, were as well known to us as the Andersons and the Spencers who lived across the street.

Our mothers would shoo us away occasionally but we were always drawn back by their hushed voices and smothered laughter.

Yesterday morning, was a bright late summer Saturday morning here in the bread basket of the world and I was in the mood to spend it with a friend so I wondered over to SoberMomRocks blog, Oh for the love of...me to do some re-reads and make some comments.  Before long, she commented back to me through email and then I commented back to her and ....before long we had a conversation going.  We both thought, Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get together with our other fellow bloggers and have coffee and just talk.  (Didn't we, Sherry? I've been known to drag people unwittingly into my wild-ass schemes before. ) But since we can't do that, wouldn't it be nice to be able to chat real time instead of having these kind of one-sided conversations we get to have with our blogs.  I know we kind of do that with our comments but sometimes we miss the replies or we don't pay as much attention to what the other commenters say.  Okay, maybe it's just me that does that.



So what'd ya'll think?  Wanna find an empty chatroom for just us gal bloggers (we might even let in a token guy or two, I'm pretty sure the gal in the gauchos above has hairy legs to go along with that mustache) and our followers somewhere or design our own to meet up and just talk sometimes? 

Just a thought and not that consequential, if we like things the way they are, we like things the way they are.

  BTW SoberMomRocks Sherry is not my friend Sherry of last week's blogs...or is she? Maybe my friend Sherry has an alter-ego, split personality, sober twin who disappeared years ago when her car broke down and a double-decker VW band full of Deadheads picked her up on their way to a concert and someone slipped her some bad mushrooms and she has suffered amnesia ever since... Sorry, must be the effects of being the child of a cigarette smoking, Tab drinking, soap opera watching mother of the 70's ( Sherry, I hope we don't find out that Elmo is really your brother from that brief period when your father turned to the arms of another woman when he thought your mother was lost at sea but then she was rescued from that deserted island in the South Pacific by the captain and crew of small tourist boat out for a three hour tour carrying a professor, a girl from Kansas, a millionare and his wife, and a movie star that had a daily fresh change of clothes, including evening wear, for three years.)

Someone To Watch Over Me

I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking. ~Jean Cocteau

Day 229 of Sobriety

Barbara saw her first and pointed her out to me, at first I didn't recognize her and then I noticed her halo and wings and knew that I knew her.

Barbara wanted her for her own but she wavered for just a minute too long and I stole her out from under her nose.  Don't you hate friends that do that?  Lo siento, Babs, but she belongs to me.

My poor Guardian Angel, I've certainly given her a run for her money.  She must be plumb tuckered out from swooping down to keep me from falling off leaky old boats or wobbly old docks, or from sitting on a bar stool cringing while I regaled the crowd with another dirty joke or from holding my hand during the long nights of withdrawal.

So now she hangs at the side of my bed looking down at me and looking....bored.  Too bad!

Hey! What does that say about my sex life? Ja Ja Ja!

Effervescence

effervesce

2.to issue forth in bubbles.

3.to show enthusiasm, excitement, liveliness, etc..

Day 222 of Sobriety (Hey, Room 222 was one of the Friday night line up of my favorite shows when I was about 7 years old.  The line-up was The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and then Love American Style.  God, I'm old!).

I almost groaned out loud when my brother-in-law asked if we wanted to go snorkeling in Akumal the next morning.  Didn't he know I had lived on a boat for twelve years?  Didn't he know I had seen my fill of fish and underwater things? Truth be told, I'd never really "got" the allure of snorkeling, it was just one more activity that took time away from the one activity I enjoyed the most. Drinking.

 I didn't groan. 

You see, I was on my best behavior after the last disastrous visit I had with my brothers-in-law a year ago at Carnaval in Merida.  During that visit I spent the better part of two days being moved around by my brothers-in-law and the cap'n in a catatonic drunken stupor amidst the revelers, the lesser part was spent passed out behind closed shutters in the hotel room as the cacophonous parade passed by down below.

 So now I just gritted my teeth and made myself smile and say, "I can't wait."

Simply put, it was glorious.  I floated languorously  above the rainbow fish cavorting below.  It was effortless and, for the first time, I experienced the peace that I had heard others expound on for years in regard to the underwater world.  For the first time, I wasn't weighted down by the edge of panic brought about by a hangover, or pulled by the thought of a cocktail waiting for me in the boat or at the bar.

My brothers-in-law laughed when I said, "I think that is the first time I've ever snorkeled without a hangover. I want to try it again.  I want to try everything over again."

I was effervescent.

Oh, the first definition of effervescent? It is: 1. To emit small bubbles of gas, as a carbonated or fermenting liquid.

"Perdon mi!"

Happy Sober Easter II: The Sequel

 Ninas first Easter egg hunt.

I lied on my Weight Watchers list. I put down that I had 3 eggs... but they were Cadbury chocolate eggs. ~Caroline Rhea

Day 218 of Sobriety

I looked back to see where I was on this journey last Easter, I was on Day 9 of one of my abs stints, so this is my second Easter in a row that I have been sober.  Hallelujah!  I am so thankful for that. I don't usually blog about my gratitude list but I do one daily, sometimes more than once a day, sometimes all day long.  Easter morning seems like an especially good time to be grateful.

Today I am grateful for:
God's love that didn't and won't forsake me and abides forevermore.
My love of self that perseveres through all the trials and tribulations.
The love of  others, here and in heaven, which sustains me.
My love for others which compels me.
Boundless love that renews and refills each day with hope, forgiveness, and joy.

I think I'll include chocolate covered almonds in pretty Easter pinks and yellows and blues for good measure.

Felices Pascuas, Mi Amigos!

Coming Clean: Part I

 Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. ~Elbert Hubbard

Day 207 of Sobriety

I promised I would always be honest and I have a confession to make.  You might have noticed that lately instead of putting “Day # of Abs” up there on my day count I sneakily changed it to “Day # of Sobriety” and that is because I have drank in those 207 days.  Early in my sobriety, I think it was  in the first two or three months, I took four little sips of beer at four separate times.  Gasp!  It was early in my sobriety and I can remember that the days when I chose to imbibe in my four little sips were sunny and bright and warm, the kind of days for which cold bracing beer is just made and I just wanted that taste on my tongue for just an instant.  And that was it, that was enough.  I didn’t confess it to ya’ll at the time because I truly didn’t think it was significant, but then I read a post from a fellow traveler on this journey and he had taken a toast at a friend’s funeral and he was feeling very torn about whether to reset his sobriety date in AA and he was questioning the other members of the message board about what he should do.  From the responses he received, I realized that even though I might not attach much significance to those 4 little sips of beer, others do, and because I want others to recognize my sincerity and integrity and commitment in this vital venture of mine, I changed my Days to Sobriety Days instead of Abs Days and more importantly I quit taking sips of beer, or anything else.

So why did I not think those 4 little sips were significant?  Because at none of the times that I took those sips did I believe that I was jeopardizing my sobriety. I didn’t and still don’t, believe that any one of those 4 little sips would send me spiraling into a relapse.  And they didn’t. The Catholic religion believes that the difference between a venial and a mortal sin is that when you choose to commit a mortal sin you willingly and knowingly turn your back on God.  Those little sips were venial sins against my sobriety, I didn’t turn my back on sobriety.  I believe it’s the significance that we place on things that give them their power.  If I had believed those four little sips would trigger a relapse, they could have.  If I believed cooking with wine could steal my control and have me pouring a glass while I cook, it might.  If I believed that if I continue to go to bars and parties, I would eventually, inevitably drink, I probably would.  But those are the beliefs of others, they are not mine, and that is why I have not joined with some of the established establishments in this field, because if I started attaching the importance they feel I should on some things that I don’t think are all that important, I may start to believe, as they do, that I am destined to fail. And I will.

Where do I draw the line?  What is the difference between a sip and a glass or two of wine if I don’t attach any significance to them?  I don’t know, I just know for me there is a difference. Why, if they were not significant, did I wait so long to write abou tmy 4 little sips?  My surface response is that I always thought there were more important things to write about, but I’m sure down deep under the surface there is some avoidance of the issue involved.  I don’t want to spend a whole lot of effort justifying those 4 little sips because, then again, I’m attaching too much significance to them and giving them too much power.  

You might have noticed this blog is just Part 1.  There was an incidence during my birthday weekend that I feel jeopardized my sobriety more than those 4 little sips but in my commitment to be more concise, I’ll save that for my next blog. 

So today I’m just out there doing my best to avoid the near occasions of sin, no matter the significance or insignificance attached.

P.S. Sorry for the confusion to the early readers of this post, I forgot to put my title in the title slot. Lo siento.

P.P.S.  I just read through this post again and noticed all the errors that were there.  It's kind of a confusing post anyway and it was even more so before I corrected it.  My excuse is that we had to run into Merida early this morning and I wanted to post this before I left, knowing that by the time I got home I would have brain drain.  Instead, my brain hadn't had it's fill of caffeine or daylight yet and was still on snooze mode.  Readers of  the earlier non-improved post probably thought I'd started sipping again. Ja Ja Ja

Fixin' To

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."

Overcoming Addiction Quote by George Eliot (November 1819 - December 1880)

Day 201

Another long absence to explain/excuse away, it’s such a relief to be able to be honest and not have to cover up my drinking anymore.  Last night we were supposed to go to yet another fundraiser and I just didn’t feel like it and called my friend who was throwing it to tell her that I wasn’t going to make it, a year ago she would have assumed that I was too drunk or hungover.  Not anymore.

I’ve been busy. Busy meddling in other people’s business and busy offering unsolicited advice.  Oh, and I didn’t have any internet service for three days which nettled me to no end.  And the internet provider didn’t even call to ask for my advice, which frustrated me even further.

You see, I’m a fixer.  I love to be given a problem and asked for a solution.  Okay, maybe I’m not asked for solutions all that often but I’m always ready with one if you do ask, or even if you don’t.  Except when it comes to my own problems.  Ah-ha!  I can remember sitting on my sofa in the dark, unkempt and miserable in the midst of shaky withdrawals and telling the cap’n how much I hated “this,” how I couldn’t do it anymore, how much I hated me.  He would reply, “Fix it.”

Oh God!  How simple that solution seems now but how insurmountable it seemed then.  If you’re just starting this journey, you’re probably saying, “Tell me how, tell me how.”  If you’re where I am, you’re probably saying, “Why did it take me so long.”  And if you’ve been sober for a while, your nodding and saying, “I told you so.”

The solution is simply quit drinking.  So I quit drinking and everything is hunky-dory, right? Wrong.  Drinking is like a big road block sign warning you that there is danger ahead and that you’re better off taking the detour then hazarding the potholes and dangers that lie ahead.  For years,  I kept taking the detours and they kept taking me further and further from my destination, in the end I didn’t even remember where I wanted to go, much less how to get there.

So now I’ve climbed over the drinking road block and I’m hitting different road blocks and I have decisions to make.  I can take another detour, or change directions, or try to hitch a ride with someone and go wherever they’re going, or I can just sit there and be stuck.  OR I CAN CLIMB OVER THE DAMN THING AND START REPAIRING THE DAMN ROAD.

So last week I was sitting at one of these roadblocks, feeling trapped, and considering my options. Okay, enough already with the damn road construction, I’m going to speak plainly.  I was frustrated with a certain situation (How’s that for plain speaking?) and I was feeling trapped.  I was so sick and tired of someone else deciding what my options are.  So I decided I need to go back to work.  I mean really, here I am bellyaching and worrying about not being able to afford to live in CO and here but I won’t get off my lazy ass to support the cause?  But the problem is my ass ain’t just lazy, it’s scared.  Probably more scared than lazy.  But my ass is tired of being scared and lazy.

So I contacted some travel nursing agencies and I was actually getting past being scared to being excited while I was filling out the application packets.  One of the jobs I was really interested in was in a state that I don’t have a license in. “Just a tiny speed bump,” I thought. “All I have to do is apply for a license in that state.” WRONG!  Come to find out, in order to receive licensure in that particular state I have to prove that I have worked 520 hours in the past two years in the state I am licensed in.  I haven’t.  Major roadblock.  But not insurmountable, all I have to do is clock some hours in my home state.

I went to the website of the hospital in which I worked for 20 odd years and yes, there was an opening in the OR.  Great, right?  I wasn’t so sure.  The OR director is the same one who was my boss for a few years and we always had a good relationship….I think.  The last time I inquired about working there a few years ago, she told me that they didn’t need me, that their surgery schedule wasn’t busy enough.  That was true, but as an alcoholic, I always get to wonder if my drinking had anything to do with it.  Let me make it clear, I never went to work impaired, not unless you count hangovers, in that case I was impaired for 20 years, but I’m sure the apt description, “She’s a damn good nurse, but you know she’s a drinker” that I had heard applied to several of my esteemed colleagues was applied to me as well through the years.

I could have detoured around the discomfort of applying for a job back at this facility and applied at another facility in the state, but I really wanted to refresh my skills in a place that I was familiar with, plus, I needed a good reference from this supervisor to apply for other jobs.  So,…gulp…I emailed her about my situation and prepared to wait for the verdict.

I didn’t have to wait long. She emailed me the next morning, “I’ve been thinking about you,” she wrote, “I could really use you while some of the new staff is training”.

Alleluia! One more roadblock kicked to the ditch along with one more fear that my drinking had left more potholes to fill.

So I’m fixin’ to get my lazy, scared, old ass back to work.  There are a lot more roadblocks to get rid of before I can go back to work, and going back to work is just one more leg of the journey, but God it feels good to be back on the road. 

Damn good!  

So today I’m just out there doing by best to keep jumpin’ those roadblocks, fillin’ in the potholes and fixin’ the road that lies ahead.  I’m fixin’ to get to where I’m goin’.

P.S. In reference to the picture above, it doesn't seem to matter how far I go, I always end up back in KS.  Can someone tell me how to delete the "No Place Like Home" app in my ruby red slippers?

Beach Boogie

Day 185 of Sobriety

I had other plans for my blog today, actually I was torn between writing about newfound honesty or my plans to go back to work but I guess my Co-Writer decided nobody wanted to read about that sh%$ because when I decided to take a walk to more fully formulate my profound thoughts on the matters, he hit me right between the eyes with a “sign.”

I hadn’t gone far, actually I had just reached the end of my calle, when right in front of me was an older man making his way to the beach.  He was using a walker with wheels and you could see his legs were stiff and strictured and his progress was slow in the soft sand. Now I could stop right there and make this a whole blog about perseverance and not giving up and living your life in spite of your infirmities and burdens.

But that’s not the point.  I haven’t given you the full picture yet.  

Hanging off the front of the walker was a white plastic chair, one of the flimsy ones you see everywhere, the ones down here usually have the Modelo or Sol beer logo on the back of them.  Now I could stop here and write a blog about stopping in our struggles to take a moment to sit in the sun and enjoy its warmth on our face and know that all of the pain and hardship is worth it.

But you still haven’t got the whole picture.

Because hanging on the side of the walker was a boogie board and don’t you just know that as he pushed that stubborn sumbitch of a walker in that unrelenting sand his eyes were focused on that cool water that lay in front of him and all he could think of was that soon he would be able to move effortlessly in its merciful buoyancy and when he had swum as far and fast as he could go the waves would send him racing back to shore.  

I’m not sure of the lesson in that, I’m lazy today and I’ll let you come up with your own instead of supplying you with yet another one of my sophomoric analogies.

Oh, you still don’t have the full picture.

He was wearing a Speedo.

I’m not sure what the lesson is there either, but the complete picture makes me smile.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to get my boogie on and strut my stuff, infirmities be damned!

The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

Day 183

I passed the six month mark three days ago, and several very profound, I’m sure, blogs that I meant to sit down and write have escaped my brain never to return.  

My world is a kaleidoscope these days, every slight spin more and more fascinating and enthralling. This morning is made up of bright fragments of birdsong, orange and fuchsia hibiscus blossoms, the sway of palm fronds, the morning surf and warm sand.  There are fragments of expectancy, and worry, and laughter and tears in there also and as the day whirls around me they will click into their various spaces and all of it will come together to form a perfectly beautiful, ever shifting mosaic.

From Wikipedia: the word "kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλός (kalos), "beautiful, beauty",[2] εἶδος (eidos), "that which is seen: form, shape"[3] and σκοπέω (skopeō), "to look to, to examine",[4] hence "observer of beautiful forms." [5]

I am an observer of beautiful forms, my life is beautiful, beauty.  This is an apt description of who I am these days.  A couple of people have commented to me in pm’s and in person that I have made sobriety seem easy, effortless, maybe too much so, but they forget I didn’t blog about or share my first 3-4 years of this struggle, or maybe they haven’t read my first year of this blog when I was still trying to moderate. But the plain truth is, my life did become so much easier, so much more effortless, when I simply quit drinking. Believe me, there are still days that the sun doesn’t shine through the end of my kaleidoscope and all of the sharp fragments look dark and gray and no amount of spinning changes the view.  But those days are the minority now, they had their time in the majority when I was drinking and I couldn’t find the sun through my constant cloud of booze.  Now I know the dark days will pass and the light will shine through again and all my brilliant little pieces will click and find their vibrant beautiful niches.

I must ever remind myself that what I hold in my hands is a fragile contraption of reflections and tiny fragile bits of me and if I am careless and drop it all those brilliant little pieces will spill onto the warm sand to be washed away by the morning surf.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to hold on tight and not let my ever spinning world make me dizzy.

P.S.  Years ago one of my favorite students gave me a kaleidoscope, he said it symbolized himself, simplicity and plainness on the outside but ever-shifting beauty on the inside.  It got lost in one of my moves and I’ve been looking for it for years. I probably gave it away when I was drunk.  I need to go buy me another kaleidoscope.

Enough

Whitney Houston - Greatest Love Of All (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Whitney Houston

Sobriety Day 152

I loved this song.  It came out at a very difficult time in my life, and it was my anthem of hope.  I was living in my shitty drafty little house with two young boys, not enough money, and an unhappy marriage.  When the video would play on MTV, I would drop the dish I was drying or the bottom I was changing, and I'd run out to the living room to watch that video.  She was so beautiful and she made me believe that all I had to do was keep believing in myself and things would get better.

Today that song seems to mock its songstress, like so many people mocked her in the last years of her life.  And I'm sitting here hoping my Co-Writer has something up his sleeve because all I keep pulling out of the empty thin air, are questions.

What happened to that greatest love, Whitney?  Did we not love ourselves enough?

What should we tell your daughter when she asks, "Why? Didn't I love her enough? Didn't she love me enough?"  How do we let addiction convince us that the meager offerings of love it leaves us to share with others is enough?

Where does that love go? What does addiction do with it?  And why, when we manage to kick the bastard out and get some of the love back, do we then throw open the doors and say, "Come back in. Take what I have left."  When is enough, enough?

In the end, we all manage to escape, one way or another.

Yesterday you said, "Enough."

Pussy Toes

To “paint the town red” means to celebrate flamboyantly and publicly, especially to go on a wild spree, usually involving multiple bars, restaurants and clubs plus copious quantities of alcohol. “Painting the town red” is, by definition, a group activity, requiring at least two people, and must be conducted in a spirit of giddy jubilation. One lonely guy on a crosstown bender is not “painting the town red.” Of course, alcohol is not strictly required. Lottery winners, for example, often “paint the town red” after their wins, sprinting from store to store and acquiring plasma TVs, cars, multiple pedigreed pets and scores of brand new distant cousins as they go.

Day 150 of Sobriety

I am fascinated by my toes these days, I can’t take my eyes off of them and I’m about to sprain my ankle from twisting my foot to admire them from all angles.  I got my first ever pedicure about a week ago and I’ve repainted my toenails three times since.  Yesterday I bought a new pair of shiny red strappy flip flops to go with my cherry red polish and the flirty little skirt I bought the other day at the Funky Market/Dragon Bazaar we had here in our little village. I painted up my lips in hot red lipstick and sashayed my way down the Malecon in Progreso yesterday with Greta on the way to lunch at a great new restaurant we discovered. Okay, I have to be truthful since I know Greta is going to read this blog, I didn’t really sashay, it was more of a stumble in my new shoes.  I still haven’t learned to walk while sober.

 I don’t know who this person is that has come to occupy my body these days.  I’ve never in my life been a shiny toenail, flirty skirt and “f” me sandal wearing kind of gal.  Maybe it’s like my friend cp said the other day, “The thing I despise about addiction is that it closes a person in on themselves. It narrows the world down to just plain feeding the addiction. We begin to lose interest in everything ..including ourselves.” 

For me, alcohol was a 30 year insidious invasion that kept advancing until it had almost conquered me.  Almost.  There was still a stubborn corner of my soul that refused to back down, a tiny ragged fierce contingent that hung on for dear life.

Yesterday, after Greta and I finished lunch, we went to the market to buy flowers (first we stopped to get ice cream, of course).  I haggled with the flower stall owner over the price of three flower arrangements.

“Para la iglesia,” I pleaded. “de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.”  (They adore Our Lady of Guadalupe down here)

She finally conceded to sell me three for the price of two but not without putting on a sad face worthy of Emmett Kelly to let me know she wouldn’t be making any dinero on the transaction.  I assured her she would reap the many blessings of Guadalupe.

I dropped off Greta and drove back to my village where I dropped off the flowers at the church.

This morning I was eager to get out on the beach before anyone else.  The only other person that was out that early was a fisherman who was maneuvering his boat to catch the incoming tide, I set my beach bag down up above the tide line and went to help him. I have launched many a beach stranded dinghy after the party went on long after the tide went out.  We both got behind the stern of the boat and when the next wave came in we gave it a mighty push, setting it adrift.  He ran and jumped in and turned to wave good-bye.  Not a word was spoken, just two amigos doing what needed to be done.

I continued down the beach.  I have attracted two new beaus and they follow me every morning, they are brothers and I think they are part Rottweiler and part Akita.  They are pretty loyal but their heads can still be turned by a pretty young thing.  They abandoned me the other day for some twenty-something dark-eye nymph that was frolicking in the surf (as my friend Barbara would say, “All males are such whoredogs.”), but they came running when I called.  They know which beach bag their Beggin’ Strips come from.

This is me.  This is the person that was behind the sad clown mask of alcohol for all of those years.  This is that ragged but fierce corner of my soul that didn’t give up.  I won.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to regain more of my own territory and I’m going shoppin’ for a cherry red camisole to complete my outfit. Me and the gals are going out on the town tonight.  We’re gonna paint it red!

P.S.  You’re probably wondering how I managed to go almost 50 years without a pedicure, well, ya’ll know I’m a nail biter and let’s just say I’m not as agile as I used to be. Ewwww!

P.P.S. Concerning the title of this post, I just couldn't help myself.

Cock-A-Doodle-Do!!!

Day 145

Up at the ungodly hour of 5 am this morning, I wish the neighbor could convince his damn rooster to sleep in on Sundays.  Hey wait a minute, my neighbor doesn’t have a rooster.  That must have been me crowing.

The cap’n and I and our friends, Yack (That’s how our friend Gaby pronounces Jack, and it fits) and Barbara, decided to go down the Bull Pen yesterday evening for “Beer Friday On Saturday” (I’ll explain that in another post sometime).  We all promised we would only have one since we vowed to get home and cook dinner and stay at home for a change.  When we got there, a couple that rents a casa down the calle from us, Peggy and Joe, were sitting at a table up front.  We said, “Hi” and the cap’n stopped to chat with them while Yack and Babs and I took a table next to them.  I’ve never really warmed up to this couple, one reason is they don’t seem to associate with many of the expats from our village, instead they hang out with a group of fellow Canadians in Chixculub.  But the big reason is because last year, a couple weeks after New Year’s, we ran into them at the Bodega in Progreso (that is the main grocery store), we’d just walked into the store and Joe was standing at the service counter.

“I heard about your New Years Eve,” he boomed to me in decibels loud enough to be heard across El Gulfo to Galveston.

“Oh really,” I asked, trying to find an escape route through the crowd maneuvering their shopping carts through the entrance.

“I heard you were plastered!!” boomed the human foghorn again.

Suffice it to say, I’ve been giving them a wide berth ever since.

We stayed true to our word yesterday and only had one drink each, as I was getting in the car to leave I realized I was carrying the glass from the bar.  When I went back in to return it, Patrick, the owner, was at Peggy and Joe’s table.  I went over and sat the still half-full glass down on their table.

“Has that got rum in it?” Joe boomed. “If it does, I’ll drink it.”

“Nope, just Coke-lite,” I replied nonchalantly.

“No rum?” the crestfallen Joe asked in bewildered disbelief.

“ ‘Fraid not.” I patted his hand and left.

My neck’s a little sore this morning from the strain of holding it up so high.

So today I’m just out there doing my best not to get too cocky and praying for low humidity (I’ve put my elf outfit back on and I’m making peanut brittle to sale at a bazaar to build up the kitty for next Christmas’s toy drive).

Welcome To The World, Atalie Jolene!!

Every child begins the world again.... ~Henry David Thoreau

Day 134

My granddaughter was born yesterday.  Ol' Hank was right when he said what he said above, I have a whole new world to live in.  A world that has Atalie Jolene in it and I'll be able to give her a world in which she has a sober grandma.  I am so thankful for that.

As I returned my son's phone call yesterday via Skype, I had the thought, "Hey, I don't have to try to cover up the fact that I've been drinking, or wait until I sober up a little before I make this call."  I'm so thankful for that, too.

I am so full of hopes and dreams for this baby girl, and so full of hopes and dreams for me.  I'm looking out at the beach as I type this and I can see her with her with her little beach bag bending over to pick up a pretty shell and then squealing and running as the cold water from the gulf rushes in to kiss her toes.  I can see a bevy of well-loved dolls gathered around a little table up in the dome as Princess Atalie serves them tea up in her tower.  (I've had the tiny little china tea set for years, just waiting for her to get here.)

I can see her painting a pretty pink birdhouse with lots of yellow daisies and purple butterflies to hang high in the pine trees above the tire swing at my cabin in Colorado.  I see snow angels taking flight as a little angel in red boots falls back giggling, flapping arms and legs in the soft snow.  I feel a sleepy head on my shoulder as the dancing flames of a campfire settle down to glowing embers.

I feel tears of joy on my cheek as I type this.  Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Welcome to my new world, Atalie Jolene!

Nurse Reveals The Top Five Regrets People Have On Their Death Beds - Living Faith - Home & Family - Catholic Online

Day 131

Don't let the messenger scare you away, there is nothing exclusively Catholic or Christian about this article.  I don't care if you worship the god of belly button lint, you're still going to die, so read the article.

Nurse reveals the top five regrets people have on their death beds - Living Faith - Home & Family - Catholic Online

I was scooting around the internet this morning looking for mass readings so I would have at least a faint idea of what the priest would be espousing in Espanol at misa today, when I came across this article.  What struck me was how many of these regrets I no longer have since I quit drinking.  I am actively working to reverse every single one of these.  Alcohol was keeping me from doing this.  It is like alcohol was killing me at the same time it was not allowing me to live the life I wanted.  Duh!

So today I'm just out there doing my best to leave no regrets and keeping my belly button clean. JIC!

P.S. I actually once saw a piece of modern art (?) at the Philadelphia Museum Of Art that was a plaster mold of about 100 belly buttons.  Not a speck of lint among them.  Also, as an operating room nurse, I'm not a big fan of belly button lint since I have personally cleaned belly buttons that you could grow a crop of potatoes in.  People please clean your belly buttons before you have surgery!!!  Maybe that is the sixth regret, "I wish I'd kept my belly button cleaner." Ja Ja Ja!  I'm just cracking myself up these days.

Time Of Peace

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

-- Albert Camus (1913 -1960)

Day 130

I emailed an old friend this morning and told her the only thing that would make my life better these days would be if I started shitting gold coins.  I know, I know, that’s a little crass but sometimes no other word fits and yes, I might be exaggerating on the condition of my life in general but for today it seems apt.

Greta is off of her crutches so we couldn’t panhandle for our breakfast yesterday, darn it.  She looks great, strong and brown, and the look of determination in her eyes reflects the same determination I feel.  We beat that sumbitch!  But I also recognize that wisp of wariness that occasionally floats across her eyes.  We know the sumbitch is just around the corner waiting to jump us again. 

As we sat on the terraza of Flamingo’s yesterday enjoying our desayunos, hot cakes for Greta and chiliquilles con pollo for me, we reminded me of a couple of old war veterans.  I knew onlookers couldn’t see the shadows of the battles we’ve fought lurking around us, all they saw were two friends enjoying a meal and one another’s company in the bright Mexican morning sun.  Just like them.  They also couldn’t see that, for us, the sun was a little brighter, the water of the Gulfo was a little bluer, and the shadows a little lighter.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to enjoy and prolong this time of peace.  And checking for gold coins. Ka-ching! Ja Ja Ja! (That's Spanish for Ha Ha Ha!)

Ask And You Shall Receive

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.

--Abraham Lincoln

Day 124

The wind blew me off the beach this morning and onto the beach road which is a little more sheltered.   I soon found myself at the village square and since it was Domingo I wandered into the church.  I tried to shush my mind long enough to just listen but I’m not very good at that.  I found myself thinking about the mantra I used to repeat to myself on those tortured nights when I couldn’t sleep and I was trying to force myself to stay in bed and not go down those damn stairs and open that damn bottle of wine.  Some of those nights I really thought I was going to die.  When I’d worn out the “Hail Mary’s” and  I’d gone through all of the remnants of prayers that I could remember,  I would repeat this mantra over and over hoping it would lull me to sleep.  Sometimes it worked, more times than not though, the wine won the battle.

The mantra I made up for myself was a simple plea,

Dear God,

Please help me to

Be Better

Live Better

Love Better

This morning in the church I realized he had been listening.

Roses, Coppertone And Damn Bees

"There is nothing perfect,” August said from the doorway. “There is only life.”

--From The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Day 122

Our next door neighbors had an above ground swimming pool which was considered pretty high class in our middle class neighborhood back in the 70’s.  I was about six or seven years old before Mom decided I was old enough to swim in it without her playing lifeguard.  I remember feeling quite grown up and bragging about my new privileges to my younger friends, Lavonna and Lori, who just rolled their eyes and I’m sure thought, “Oh Brother, here she goes acting all like little Miss Know-It-All again.” 

I can remember counting the seconds and giving an update to Mom every ten minutes of that torturous hour after lunch that I was required to wait in order to avoid succumbing to the deeply dreaded cramps whose merciless reputation was facilitated by generations of mothers.  Luckily, today’s mothers are no longer subjected to the whining plea of, “Aw come on Mom, I swear I’ll just sit on the side and put my feet in.  I swear I won’t get in.  Can I go, Mom? Can I? Can I?  Pleeeeeaaaaasssssssseee?” since the fabled cramps have now gone the way of stuck crossed-eyes and gum that stuck in your stomach for seven years.

Finally the hour would be up or Mom would finally crater and I would run out the front door and across the neighbor’s yard and around the side of their house to the gate to their back yard and that 8 ft. in diameter oasis of flimsy aluminum filled with cool chlorinated water.  Along the side of their house ran a hedge of climbing roses and bees were drawn there by the sun warmed intoxicating perfume.  They would happily buzz around in a drowsy lull until a golden headed little girl raced by and the new intoxicating scent of Coppertone turned their heads and they would give chase.

Sorry Mom.  I didn’t sit on the side and dangle my feet for 10 minutes like I promised.

Yesterday morning I was sitting on my back patio and that same scent from so many years ago floated in from the blooming roses in my flowerbed.

“We need to leave in 10 minutes,” I hollered in to the cap’n as I put the camera and Coppertone in my beach bag.  We were headed up the coast a ways with a group of friends to the village of Sisal with its uninhabited sweeping beaches.

If we had been traveling by boat, Sisal would be a hop, skip and a jump from here but we were going by automobilia and because of one inlet that lacked a bridge, we had to drive all the way inland to Merida and then back out to the coast.

When our caravan finally arrived at Sisal’s windswept dune, we spilled out of our cars like eager seven year olds.  As I crested one of the dunes and looked at the miles of remote beach that stretched as far as my eyes could see I thought, “I could live here for a while.  I could walk these beaches for hours without seeing a soul.  I could write “my book” without interruption.  I could drink without anyone knowing.”

Damn Bees!

I ran down to the water and dove in.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to stop and smell the roses and dodging those damn bees.

Message From Afar

love builds up the broken wall

and straightens the crooked path.

love keeps the stars in the firmament

and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides

each of us is created of it

and i suspect

each of us was created for it”

--Maya Angelou

Day 120

Some miracles can be buried and lose their shine in the razor sharp sands of time that wash in and pile up in a short 24 hours.  I wanted to write about yesterday’s miracle while it was shiny and new but because of a shortage of that shifty thing called time, I didn’t.  Now I find myself doubting that it was even a miracle at all and I’m frantically brushing off the sand and spitting and rubbing trying to bring it back to its original  luster.

I was walking my strand of beach yesterday scanning the sand for treasure, I’m not really a shell collector but I always manage to return back to the casa with one arm an inch longer from carrying a bag of sea junk.  Up ahead of me was a Mexican man also carrying a mesh bag and poking around in the sand and rocks, this was strange because he didn’t look like a “spit and polish” Meridian here for a holiday, instead, with his sun faded, frayed clothing and weathered face, he looked like one of the local fisherman.  Believe me, those poor souls don’t have time to play shell seekers.

I watched from afar as he prodded and dug at something in the sand until finally curiosity got the better of me and I walked up to see what he was so intent on digging up.  As I approached I saw him digging along the edge of a large buried slab of concrete.  He looked up at me and smiled and I tried idiotically to pantomime that the chunk of concrete would be too big for his bag and too heavy to carry.  He went back to digging and I continued on along the beach.  I hadn’t gone far when I heard him approaching from behind me. 

“Senora,” he called.

I turned and he held out his hand to show me what he had been digging for.

It was a starfish.

Now if you’ve read through all of my blogs, you know that starfish hold a certain significance for me.  Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about a starfish I found on the beach and I blogged about my mother and told about the priest calling her a Starfish Thrower in his homily at her funeral. So when the fisherman showed me his treasure, I knew it was special.  I knew it was a miracle.  I just didn’t know what it meant.

This morning I think I’ve figured it out.

As I grow older, I grow more and more comfortable with and proud of the similarities between my mother and me. For years I tried to deny them but one glaring similarity that couldn’t be ignored is the fact that both of us are married to “drinkers”.  Although I would never say that I was scarred by my dad’s drinking, I was definitely affected by it.  It was always there in the background, laced through all the years of my childhood.  Though not constant, the arguments about his drinking were frequent enough and frightful to me as a child. That may explain some of the fear I’m feeling these days.    I’ve been browsing the message boards lately in search of a means to bring a resolution and some peace to my turmoil in dealing with the capn’s drinking.  I’ve read a lot about detachment as a means of survival.  I don’t like how detachment sounds. It scares me. I don’t want to detach from anything.  I feel like that was what I was doing when I was drinking.  I tell myself that the cap’n and I love each other too much to end up like the testimonies that I’ve read.  I’m scared that those women told themselves the same thing.

 My dad never quit drinking, but in the last few years of Mom’s life there seemed to be less turmoil about it and there was a peace in their marriage.  Maybe Mom finally learned to detach herself, but I don’t think so.  I never knew that woman to detach from anything, we worked in the same hospital every day and she still called me nightly to check up on me. That’s how I viewed her phone calls then, now I think maybe she was just lonely.  I get that.

No, I don’t think she detached.  Instead I think Dad was one of her starfish.  I’m sure that sometimes the same starfish strand themselves over and over on the rocky shores and you have to keep picking them up and tossing them to safety.  Hopefully every time you fling them, your arm gets a little stronger and they end up further and further until they are finally far enough that they no longer feel the pull of the perilous coastline.  Or at least you get some respite.

I think Mom was just trying to tell me not to give up.  Or maybe she was just letting me know she’s still checking up on me. Lol

I tried to hand the starfish back to the fisherman but he shook his head and pointed to me.  It was a regalo.  A gift.

We parted and walked opposite ways on the beach.  The starfish curled up one of its legs in my hand.  It was still alive.  I looked over my shoulder to make sure my new friend wasn’t watching and I flung that little starfish with all my might into the outgoing tide.

Today I’m just out there doing my best to keep my miracles spit and polished and pumping my little two pound barbells as hard as I can.  The cap’n better watch out, who knows where I might fling him.

P.S.  There were some incidences I was involved in on the message boards last night that I’m not feeling particularly proud of this morning.  Some of God’s creatures that get flung from the sea onto the beach are not as benign or beguiling as the starfish.  Some of them are like the blue “Medusa” jellyfish that I also find on the beach.  You need to give these creatures a wide berth because even though they may look dead and harmless their long tentacles that are buried in the sand can still cause you extreme harm.   As malevolent as these creatures may seem, they may just be scared, too, and are using the only line of defense that is left to them.  There is no need to poke at them with your pointy stick and cause them even more misery.  I am sorry.